Jeremy Driskell
Illinois State University, IL·Chemistry
Many rapid diagnostic tests, such as point-of-care tests, rely on gold nanoparticles coated with antibodies, proteins that recognize a disease marker. How well these tests work depends on how the protein sticks to the gold.
- Fields
Chemistry
Biochemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
gold nanoparticles
AuNP
nanobodies
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Determine how nanobody charge, controlled by pH, affects adsorption onto gold nanoparticles, and build a predictive model for making stable, robust nanobody-gold conjugates.
- Assemble nanobody- and antibody-coated gold nanoparticles into ordered structures, and measure plasmon resonance shifts and SERS enhancement to see how coating thickness affects particle coupling and detection.
- Attach a cysteine- and lysine-rich peptide to antibody site Q295 using the enzyme microbial transglutaminase, confirming the attachment by mass spectrometry and protein charge.
- Measure how strongly peptide-modified antibodies bind gold nanoparticles with a competitive binding assay and nanoparticle tracking analysis, and quantify their antigen-binding activity with an enzyme assay.
More about the research
It matters whether the protein binds firmly, whether it faces the right direction to catch its target, and how far apart it holds neighboring particles. Current coating methods often leave proteins randomly oriented, unstable or hard to apply to every antibody. This research studies the surface chemistry of protein-gold nanoparticle conjugates to build more reliable, sensitive probes.
Why it matters
More stable and better oriented protein coatings on gold nanoparticles could make point-of-care diagnostic tests more accurate and SERS-based sensors more sensitive. General design rules for attaching antibodies and nanobodies could help developers of diagnostic, imaging and therapeutic technologies. That includes tools for tracking disease outbreaks and biological threats.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Pietro Strobbia
University of Cincinnati, OH·Chemistry
Identify which functional DNA sequence features control the performance of catalytic surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensors, using inverse design and machine learning.
Suljo Linic
University of Michigan, MI·Engineering
Synthesize plasmonic single atom alloy nanoparticles, silver or gold particles with isolated platinum, palladium, rhodium or ruthenium atoms at the surface, and characterize their geometry.
Tuan Vo-Dinh
Duke University, NC·Biomedical Engineering
Develop CARTP, a signal-amplifying add-on to inverse Molecular Sentinel SERS nanoprobes, and test its specificity, sensitivity and multiplexing for three Alzheimer's-related microRNAs using synthetic targets.
The school
Illinois State University: 2 labs on PI Pages, $34M a year on research, 48 research doctorates a year.
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